You've Got (Too Much) Mail

The number one decluttering tip: Empty that box

Anna Quindlen once remarked, "If you want something, it will elude you. If you do not want something, you will get 10 of it in the mail." Despite the proliferation of e-mails, e-vites, and e-cards, we still get plenty of paper in our mailboxes. And for many of us, too much mail equals unnecessary stress.

Recently, a friend of mine didn't check her mail for two days because she'd come home late both evenings. When she looked in her box on the third day, it was empty except for a note from her mailman: Her box had been so full, he'd assumed she was on vacation and was holding her mail at the post office. And if you're someone who hoards catalogs (so many great gift ideas!) or lets the bills sit around until the last minute, you know how quickly a neat pile of letters can turn into an anxiety-inducing avalanche of paper clutter.

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The U.S. Postal Service processes an average of 563 million pieces of mail every day. That's a lot of opportunities to rack up late fees from overlooked bills or miss out on a great local event or sale. Here's how to tackle the junk and set up a clutter-reducing mail-management system:

Curb Your Catalogs

First, get rid of more than half your mail before it even arrives. Taking the time to officially opt out of junk mail and offers not only eliminates waste, but also gives you back hours that would otherwise be lost to sorting. Jennifer Lava, a professional organizer who helps people manage their workspaces, recommends two mail-control websites: catalogchoice.org and optoutprescreen.com. Banks that you currently do business with are allowed to continue to send you offers; should you want them to stop, contact the customer service rep at your bank. While you're at it, you can also change your privacy preferences to control whom they share your personal information with.

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Move Household Business Online

Christi Schien, 49, a mom of three in Macon, GA, pays all her bills online. "We no longer receive monthly bank statements or bills for insurance, utilities, and credit cards," Schien says. "All the account information we need is stored electronically, which always makes it easier to find." As for worries about the safety of moving all of your personal business online, security and technology expert Bob Sullivan, author of Stop Getting Ripped Off, admits that "going paperless brings with it all the usual concerns: The more log-ins you have, the more passwords you have to remember, the more likely you are to use the same one repeatedly, the better the odds that a site you use will be hacked and you'll be in trouble." But he says identity theft is a bigger threat with snail mail: "I firmly believe that the online risks are outweighed by the benefits, even when it comes to security — keeping five or six bills out of your mailbox every month makes you safer. Mailboxes are easier to hack than in-boxes." Manilla.com (a new website from Hearst, Good Housekeeping's parent company) is a free service that securely organizes and archives household account information, from phone bills to frequent-flier accounts, in one place, accessible with a single password. Sites like mvelopes.com and mint.com are also great tools for managing the three B's — bill paying, budgeting, and banking — online.

Even the U.S. government is going paperless. As of May 1, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other divisions that pay out federal benefits stopped issuing paper checks to new benefit recipients. (If you are already receiving paper checks, you have until March 2013 to enroll in an electronic-deposit program.)

Chuck Junk with Confidence

Maybe you're holding on to your old mail because you're afraid that if you don't review every single piece, you'll miss out on a "Save $10!" deal or another offer you just can't refuse. The first step in taking control of your mail is confidence, says Gail Steketee, Ph.D., dean of Boston University's School of Social Work and coauthor of Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things. "Good mail managers "know what they want and when they want it," says Steketee. Make those quick and hard decisions about what goes where and what deserves your attention.

Situating yourself in the right place to sort can help get you in a good frame of mind to discard junk. Instead of settling in on the sofa, Emilia Suarez-Riggs, 50, a second grade teacher in Orange County, NY, sorts her mail standing up, right next to the recycling can: "I tear up any unnecessary mail and toss it right then and there," she says. Schien does her one better by not letting junk get past the front door: "I stop by the outside trash can on the way back from getting the mail. Any obvious junk is never brought into the house."

Order and Organize

Junk mail rules are a first line of defense, but you need a system for everything else. Grace Whatley, 62, mom of four grown boys in Birmingham, AL, says, "A very wise friend once told me her rule was to touch a piece of mail only once. It actually works!"

If you can't deal with mail immediately, sort it as soon as you get in the door into three vital categories — Bills, Read, and Shred — and maybe one more, Possibly. If you think you might need that invitation or local-restaurant coupon, have one spot, in or near your kitchen, where you can keep such items for one month only. When the last day of the month hits, throw away what you haven't used. Have no mercy.

Lava recommends using your calendar to keep yourself on track with your mail. "It's OK if you don't want to open mail every day, but you must do it at least once a week to avoid pileups and missed bill payments," she says. Schedule a day each week for opening mail and paying bills. Making an event of it is one way to make it feel less like a chore: Have a cup of tea, play some nice music, sit at your "mail center," and get the job done. If you do it first thing Saturday morning, for example, you can start the weekend off with a nice big "done" check mark on your to-do list.

Ellie Bergmann, 34, a busy mom of two from Brooklyn, has taken on the role of mail manager in her family. Her musician husband is often on the road, and when he comes home and sorts through his share of the mail, he leaves the open mail all over the table. Bergmann is working on getting him to be more organized: "I have a corkboard to store important-but-don't-need-right-away items, like condo notices," she explains, "but he doesn't always use it." It's not a perfect system, but appointing one partner to be the mail manager has made their family time a little less stressful. Bergmann is also trying to teach her daughter good mail-management skills: "I bought those file organizers — one for my husband, one for myself, and one for my daughter. She's in preschool, and we get so much mail from school, every single day. I don't have to go through a pile to find a piece of mail anymore; I know where to look."

Getting the upper hand on even a small clutter problem like mail can have a surprising ripple effect in taming the chaos of everyday life. "It's very overwhelming to look around and say, "I have to deal with all of this clutter; this is huge," says Donna Smallin, author of The One-Minute Organizer. "One of my strategies is 'Start with today's stuff.' Mail is an everyday challenge, but it's something you can get a handle on very quickly. That's an easy way to slide into getting organized. A small task like sorting the mail can help you develop the habits you need to declutter the rest of your life."

We want your mail! Have you got a great household organizing system that you want to share, or do you have a clutter problem that you need to deal with? E-mail us at solutions@goodhousekeeping.com.